South Africa based Vox Telecom will acquire Internet services company Frogfoot Networks as part of its plan to build its own fiber optic network to serve business clients in South Africa.
Vox Telecom in a statement said the current acquisition will enable the company fast tracking its own fiber strategy by leveraging the existing skills, processes, and the installed fiber network of Frogfoot Networks. Even after the acquisition, Frogfoot will operate as a separate entity within Vox Telecom’s carrier and connectivity division, providing services to the group’s customers, in addition to wholesale services to other companies.
FrogFoot will provide fibre on an open-access basis. Frogfoot has about 40 staff and has an impressive network of fiber optic cables in Cape Town serving both business and home users. FrogFoot is starting a roll-out in Johannesburg and Durban as well. Vox Telecom has made four acquisitions in the past year. The current acquisition is the fifth one for Vox Telecom.
The deal comes after Vox Telecom’s main shareholders earlier this year decided against selling the business. This was after they considered offers from interested parties. Vox Telecom’s fiber optic deployment plans represent its first investment into the network infrastructure. The company will slowly deploy infrastructure to its customers, starting with 100 Mbps broadband speeds.
Vox would provide services using its own network and would also lease capacity where it made sense. Vox officials said that the company would start its fiber deployment in the main urban centers of Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town, and then move to smaller towns where Vox has customers, including cities such as Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth and Polokwane, and later regional centers and smaller towns such as Mmabatho, Upington and Kimberley.
The acquisitions by Vox Telecom and the fiber optic deployments forms part of a broader strategy to grow the company into a bigger and more robust contender in South Africa’s telecoms industry.
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